Okay, I've not posted here for a while. I've been blogging at http://worldcpfever.wordpress.com if you're interested in whatever inanities that I have to offer.

Who doesn't love karaoke on a Thursday night?

(Insert plug for karaoke at Miranda's starting this Thursday, 4/12, at 9:30 PM)

Anyway, some random thoughts:

1. Not playing Guitar Hero in about two months gives you awful wrist & forearm pain. Getting to play Tattooed Love Boys & Freezepop makes it worth it, though.

2. Matt Serra absolutely fed Georges St. Pierre his lunch tonight on UFC 69. That was awful. I'm not sure how you recover from an asskicking like that.

3. Check out the new Interpol album and let me know what you think. I wonder how much pressure they felt from the other bands of their ilk to get more upbeat (read: dancey) - talk about swift departures.

4, The Cubs are starting to look like the team people hoped for and THEN some. The starting pitching, save Z in the opener, has been fantastic, and the offense is starting to put some nice numbers up. A-Ram is hitting in April, which is a plus, and Mark DeRosa is hitting a lot more than I thought he would so far. It's almost enough to get me off the ledge over Jacque Jones batting #2 and Cliff Floyd starting.

5. Happy Easter to anyone who reads this. I've got an extensive blog planned for tomorrow afternoon, so I'll get some sleep for now.

Torturing myself, vol. 32

Why do I read food blogs when I'm starving? I'm such a moron.

Food blog of the day: http://homeyturtleg.blogspot.com/

Recipe of the day: http://coconutlime.blogspot.com/2005/12/coconut-lime-macaroons.html

It's early, yet. These may change. There's so much foodie luv out there. God bless the internets.

A return to blogging with some odds & ends, nuggets & tidbits.


I'm not sure what the point of a blog is if you don't keep it up, so my new resolution is to maintain this blog at least every other day. Not that I'll have anything to say, but.


1. It's nice to see that old habits die hard. In the early days of my love affair with indie rock, I found that I have a certain knack for discovering bands just on the cusp of their falling apart (or, worse, death), never to get to see them live or enjoy another album. In a similar vein, I finally dropped my anti-Doctor Who stance and decided to give it a shot, starting with the rebirth in 2005. I was completely sucked in by the performance by Christopher Eccleston as the latest Dr. Who and decided that this was a show I could really get into. Of course, about 2 episodes later he regenerates into David Tennant and Eccleston is never to be seen again, even in flashbacks. ugh.


2. Speaking of Christopher Eccleston, the sequel to 28 Days Later is coming out and I will finally be motivated to actually go to a movie theater again. As excited as I am to see the movie, the poster might even be more exciting:





3. If I ever needed a reason to cross the pond and move to England, this is it: http://snackspot.org.uk/thread.php?story=0703201856cpi

TWO WORDS: EXTRA GOO.


4. If anyone wants some action, I'll put $50 on the Wallflowers being the Waterfront headliners this year.


I promise that my posts will be more exciting from here on out just in case anyone actually reads them. In the meantime, check out some of the links on the right. There's some good stuff up there.

It's survey time.

Please vote now for the best mustache in pro wrestling history.

Your choices:

A. Magnum T.A.
















B. "Ravishing" Rick Rude



















C. "Chippendale" Tom Brandi





















D. Jimmy Del Ray




















E. Brickhouse Brown






















Feel free to write in your own choice.

One of the biggest dilemmas for music geeks is compiling a "year-in-review" list every December. Somehow, you've gotta whittle down a list of about 47 different albums, a handful of EPs and the odd single here and there to some sort of a top ten.

Luckily, the Like Young were kind enough to make things a little easier for everyone and release the best record of 2006 in May, saving us one decision to make at the end of the year. "Lost Secrets", the new album from the ex-Wolfie couple of Joe & Amanda Ziemba, is a super-fun pop gem that you really need to listen to right now.

They'll be in DeKalb (with supporting acts the Rikters, This Story and Kid, You'll Move Mountains) on the 8th of July at the House - for tickets or more info, go to http://www.thehousecafe.net/events.html.

So I often check Pollstar.com to see which bad hair bands are stopping by Rockford on yet another comeback/revival tour to make the child support payments and notice that the Waterfront bands are starting to get booked. The first thing I see is that Cherry Poppin' Daddies is playing. That's fantastic!

IF IT'S NINETEEN DAMN NINETY-NINE.

The immediate vision that comes to mind is the Waterfront committee sitting around and someone (no names, thank you) saying, "hey, I just saw Swingers on TNT the other night, and the kids just LOVE this swing thing!" I don't mind Royal Crown Revue playing years ago. I don't mind Brian Setzer playing a couple less years ago. But it's 2006.

Rockford has to find the happy medium between finding bands that are just breaking on the radio and never get any further than crappy off-peak festivals (please see Wingding) and bands that got their big break 48 years ago (please see On the Waterfront).

So I read this and I start to work up the necessarily venom and bile (and a couple of drinks) to blog about it.

And then I read the Ravinia schedule for Summer 2006.

This is supposed to be the date scene for soccer moms and dads, the yuppie Haight/Ashbury. The place to take some prosciutto and melon and enjoy Itzhak Perlman and Yo-Yo Ma or Elvis Costello and Diana Krall or what-have-you.

But, no.

First of all, you have Blondie and the "new Cars". It's bad enough that they're taking the Cars and replacing Ric Ocasek with Todd Rundgren, but this is a Ravinia show? Why isn't this at the Metro? So a bunch of the members of Oprah's book club can get out their ill-fitting Rolling Stones jersey-style tees and "rock out"? So 7,800 accountants can retell the story of the first time they saw Blondie? So Debbie Harry isn't the most ridiculous woman there?

But I do love the Cars. So I can let that go a little bit.

I will skip the Bodeans show, since my mother may read this and I want to keep this clean. Los Lonely Boys? Too easy a target.

Then I see it. It's right there for the smearing.

AN ABBA TRIBUTE BAND.

This is Ravinia. Not Elixur. Not LT's. Not some marketing VP's 25th high school reunion. It's supposedly the elysian fields of live music for the Chicago area. The place where you are hypnotized by a stirring night of transcendent live music.

Abba tribute band.

I quit. No more live music.

Why, in 2006, are people STILL holding the WWW up as this mother lode of information? If anything, the web is making us dumber, not smarter.

I log onto Yahoo tonight and skim over their list of news stories. What do I see?

"Survey shows gas prices rising"

I almost fell off my seat. Gas prices are rising nationally? REALLY? I figured it was just a Rockford thing. Jesus, the gas price stories have even managed to take away news time from Natalee Holloway's aunt. This is the information that the web is giving us.

It's like a lot of these blogs and webzines and whatnot. Suddenly just because you can type, you can WRITE. Movie freak websites full of posts like "OMG I HAVE SPOILERZ FOR X-MEN 3!!! READ HERE FIRST!!!" and baseball blogs full of stories about unnamed (oh, but it's TRUE) philandering players drinking shots of Cointreau out of the navels of coked-up co-eds.

I can peddle misinformation and noninformation as well as anyone. We all can. Does that make us "experts" who deserve the ears and eyes of the digital world? The Encyclopaedia Britannica editions of the 1920's featured entries by people like Houdini, Einstein, Freud and Curie. Those are EXPERTS.

Who do we look to as "experts" now? That fat idiot from "Ain't It Cool" and numerous failed sportswriters who "have connections".